


The Poison

by TigerLilyNoh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Chronic Pain, Fear, Fear of Addiction, Hurt Sam Winchester, Prescription Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 19:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10600479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Sam recognizes that he suffers from chronic pain and struggles with how to deal with it.





	

“Sam?  Sam, are you with me?”

Sam glanced across the table at Dean.  His brother was staring at him expectantly.  Dean had probably asked him a question.  He had been researching a monster of some sort and found something interesting, but he couldn’t put his finger on what had caught his attention.  Sam started skimming the open book in front of him trying to recall his breakthrough.

“You want some coffee?”  Dean offered.  “You look like shit.”

“I’ll get it.”  Sam said as he pushed himself up into a standing position, then weakly joked  “A couple hours staring at some of these books can make even me go cross eyed.”

“Dude, it’s been less than an hour.”  Dean corrected him.  “You might want to dump a couple tablespoons of instant coffee into the cup of drip- or I can grab the jumper cables.”

“I’m fine.”  Sam waved off Dean’s comment as he staggered down the hall to the bunker’s kitchen.

But the truth was that Sam knew he wasn’t fine.  Something was wrong with him and he didn’t know how to explain it or how to fix it.  Angelic healing wasn’t working on him anymore- well, not entirely.  The cuts, bruises, and broken bones were fixed, but something seemed to linger in him.  It was accumulating in him, permeating every ounce of him.  At that point he wasn’t sure how to think of it other than a poison.

For awhile he had wondered if it was his demonic side reawakening- Azazel’s blood, Ruby’s blood, all the other demons he’d fed on coming back to haunt him after all these years.  Some supernatural force working its effects upon him.  But then last week, he realized how wrong he’d been.  

* * *

He had broken his wrist during a fight with a vampire- If he was being honest with himself, it was a dumb mistake that got him hurt.  He was tired, he hadn’t been sleeping well, and he’d just been too slow at the wrong time.  The break was nothing special, probably just another hairline fracture on the scaphoid.  It was the kind of thing Cas could heal in a second, but with everything else that was going on, Cas had been temporarily out of contact.  

Sam had searched the medicine cabinet when he & Dean had gotten back to the bunker.  He’d meant to only take some aspirin- with all he’d endured in his life, a tiny fracture was nothing to complain about.  But something had gotten messed up.  He pulled half a dozen uniformly drab pill bottles from the cabinet before he realized that he must’ve already taken the aspirin out.  As he looked through the bottles, checking the labels, he felt like he’d lost something about what he’d meant to do.  Maybe he was just too tired from too many nights nearly void of sleep or maybe he was dazed from the fight- He was holding an open bottle of oxycodone and wasn’t entirely sure if he’d taken one or not.

He quickly put away the medicine bottles, then hurried to his bedroom.  It felt like he was losing time again.  Things weren’t connecting in his mind.  His heart was pounding as he felt doubt rising in him, whispering that he wasn’t in control anymore.  So many times he’d been buried, overpowered in his own body- in his own mind.  He stood in front of the mirror in his room and looked into his eyes wondering if something else was staring back.

“I don’t consent.”  He told his reflection.  “Get out of me!”

Nothing happened.  He stared at the mirror waiting for anything- waiting for something.  When he looked down he noticed that his wrist was swollen.  He’d probably broken it in a fight somehow, but it didn’t hurt enough for him to take anything for it.  Anyway, he was completely exhausted.  He laid down on his bed, placing his wrist on a pillow to keep it elevated.

Before he could fall asleep he caught himself sighing contentedly and was thrown by the thought.  He felt good for the first time in such a long time and he wasn’t sure why.  It didn’t make sense considering that his arm was brok- He remembered the oxycodone and felt a new fear rise in him.  He’d taken stronger drugs than he’d meant to and that’s why he felt good.  Despite all the injuries he’d had, he always had avoided taking strong painkillers, he knew that addiction ran in his family- hell, he’d struggled with addiction himself.  But he didn’t feel goofy or high- he felt a sensation that he hadn’t known even existed.  He felt the absence of pain.

For the first time in weeks or months he couldn’t feel the poison that had been teeming silently in his system.  It was pain so old and familiar that it had become his shadow.  It moved with him in every aspect of his life, barely noticed, yet always present.  He’d taken it for granted for so long that, just out of his consciousness, it had grown and begun consuming him.  It was stealing his strength and focus.  It was making him doubt himself- he was right to doubt himself, his broken wrist was evidence of that.  

The pain possessed him just as much as a demon or an angel- but he couldn’t expel it from him.  The drugs may have reduced the pain, but it was just temporary.  Cas had healed him multiple times since he’d started losing his focus, but it hadn’t gotten any better.  Sam had shrugged it off as fatigue and his assumption had only been partially right, but it wasn’t the root cause.  And the pain was a part of him in a way that couldn’t be extracted through exorcism or divine intervention.  

Laying in his bed, Sam thought about the drugs.  He didn’t want to take them- they scared the hell out of him.  Maybe he wasn’t high right then, but he knew they could very easily become habit forming and/or lose their effectiveness.  Without knowing what was actually happening to him, he didn’t want to start down a road that could easily get out of control.  Besides, he felt drowsy and his limbs were heavy.  Maybe the pain made him lose focus occasionally, but at least he was still mobile.  

Despite how good it felt to not hurt, that lightness on his soul, he told himself that he wouldn’t take any more of the the prescription painkillers.  He would have to bare a certain amount of pain- it was too important for him to keep moving.  A few tears escaped Sam as he started to succumb to the best sleep he’d had in weeks.  

* * *

For the week since then, he’d been trying to come to terms with the fact that he was living with chronic pain.  In some ways it was mundane and monotonous-  He suspected that part of him blocked out the highs and lows, smoothing everything into a dull ache in order to help him endure.  In some moments a flare up felt like it would overpower him and it was all he could do to not break in front of a witness he was interviewing or Dean.  He tried reading more in bed instead of at a table in the library, but that was only so helpful.  He couldn’t find a way to really recover in a significant way- and definitely not now.

“Hurry up with the coffee.”  Dean called out from the library.  “We’ve only got three hours before the full moon’s in full swing.”

Sam was fairly sure that they were looking for a werewolf- or maybe it was a related species.  He leaned against the hallway wall for a moment and rubbed his face before glanced at two doors a little ways down the hall.  One led to the kitchen and a fresh pot of coffee.  The other led to a bathroom with a fully stocked medicine cabinet.


End file.
